7+ (Blockchain-based) Alternatives to Youtube

There is life beyond YouTube and measuring the quality of a video by its hit counter. There’s life beyond wondering just how many subscribers to various channels are ‘real’ or active subscribers – that haven’t just been bought off some freelancer site.

You could try a video-sharing site that lets you see how many votes a video has received, that actually cost something from a viewer to cast.

By all means continue uploading content to YouTube, ensuring viewers sit through the same advert once again at the price of their precious time. However, there are sharing site users today who never watch ads (unless they get paid in crypto for doing so) and who get paid more directly.

Also, their uploaded content will not be subject to unexpected subscription alterations, unexplained censorship or outages due to being stored centrally on a Google server somewhere. These content creators may even be participants in a community-run platform created by, and for, video-sharing enthusiasts.

Youtube has shown it can provide a decent, regular source of income for those who can tap into an audience after a regular style, format or content that keeps them motivated or excited about some subject, or subjects. These days, once you have your ‘thing’, you will find there are alternative sites to post your videos; ones that can earn good money that isn’t derived mostly from advertising.

Crypto Tokens + Ecosystem

Instead, an income can be earned by participating in a vibrant ecosystem where a platform ‘token’ or cryptocurrency has been integrated.

This token may have a multitude of other related purposes on the same platform, contributing to an increase in value. (Related activities like video editing, audio marketplace etc.)

At any time, your earned tokens, from being popular or highly voted, or service-providing, or via isolated donations from fellow viewers or contributors, can be withdrawn from secure wallets and moved to accessible global marketplaces where they can be traded for other valuable currencies like Bitcoin, or traditional ones (stablecoins).

Storage of one’s video content history may also occur decent-rally, meaning that files need not reside on central servers more vulnerable to hacking, data loss or failure.

Some of these sites or projects may still be a little clunky, or suffer from the lack of a vast user-base, but let’s take a look at a few up and coming alternatives to Google’s Youtube.

VIEW is the token at View.ly, in which its contributors are paid. Ade’s Press can proudly state that it participated in the ICO crowdsale for this project. It’s nice to see how the project has evolved since 2018, and the token price is very active.

The interface is nice and clean, and the in-built wallet has its own password and currently supports Ethereum and VIEW. You can use the VIEW tokens (an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token) you earn or deposit to vote on other videos, helping to support great or like-minded creators. It’s probably a good idea to backup your VIEW to an external wallet like MyEtherWallet.com now and then.

There is also a project called Viewly.ONE, which via a browser extension, allows you to vote and support videos with your VIEW tokens, who are still based on Youtube. If the creators are not yet on View.ly, then their votes/donations are stored for a time in an off-chain ledger, until they sign up. It’s a great idea to spread adoption, and it’s a bit like the Brave Rewards/BAT scheme.

DTube is part of the popular Steem Blockchain, with its different dapps that connect to it. This means anyone with a Steemit account will find it easy to log-in at DTube. If you haven’t got a Steem account yet, it’s well worth creating one over at Steemit.com. It has a strong community. You can earn Steem and support videos (again, free from any advertising) via uploading or voting.

This is the well-made About section at DTube that shows active development and it remains a vital part of the Steem ecosystem.

The upload time works fine, but this may depend on your closest node. 4K is likely off the map, but I don’t search for 4k videos when I use Youtube. As dapps in general mature, and infrastructure improves, it’s possible to see DTube seeing growth.

DLive was originally another Steem project, but is now on the more dedicated Lino Blockchain. It’s a decentralised live streaming platform still with an emphasis on being community-owned, and with its own reward scheme and rewards pool. It looks to be getting popular with younger folks, especially for game or eSports streaming. The design is good, along with the community spirit and dedicated mobile app.

The way to participate more in the network is to lock up your LINO tokens, as this allows you to join in the management of the platform, governance, help out with product development via questionnaires and get access to premium services. For viewers, engagement with watching streams and chatting with creators can also be rewarded by the Engagement Bonus. Check out the full welcome letter here, and start getting involved with this mini-rebellion against YouTube. It could pay off when this blockchain gets going down the line.

Concerns: LINO is not a global cryptocurrency as yet and lives – not as yet – on a very decentralised network. However, this might make sense considering the bandwidth it must require and the adoption it seeks from casual – or younger – users. If it can prove its intentions and continue to develop and grow in its current guise, then it might entice more crypto users, if it would move away from its ‘points’ system that is likely very controlled. Also, there are increasing competitors from more deeply conceived decentralised ideas or frameworks such as THETA network (below).

Sliver.tv is also a streaming and eSports platform with an exciting new decentralised infrastructure or solution that rewards not only live streamers but those hosting the stream thanks to its integration with THETA and TFUEL or ThetaFuel. Securing a partnership with Tencent gaming this project aims to tackle the infrastructure expense by involving gamers and streamers. How? By incentivising them to bring their own bandwidth to the platform, and reward them.

TUBE is a proper cryptocurrency on the decentralised video platform at BitTube that rewards both content creators and viewers. The platform was launched in December 2017 (what an interesting time!) It’s still looking very interesting, with the right outlook of involving participants and becoming community-led. It aims to be censorship-free. Transactions are both transparent and completely anonymous. The interface is very intuitive and languages available include Klingon! There are separate, dedicated wallets for TUBE tokens, which can also be mined separately, as it’s based on the Monero codebase (althrough it remains ASIC-resistant, following a fork). It could be a real contender for the ‘Bitcoin Youtube’ crown.

Also, BitTube takes its TUBES token outside of video-sharing and implements a way to reward creators across the web via a Browser Extension / App / separate wallet. It also includes some other features, which is why you’ll end up creating 2 separate log-ins, one both for Bit.Tube.com and one for the Online Wallet/extension (if you want the secondary features). Basically they’re very similar to the Brave Rewards/BAT token. The browser app is well designed and secure. I’ll cover these in a separate post.

BitTubers.com — update 2019:The new platform Bittubers.com is now an impressive improvement. There are now complete profile pages, sensible membership options (payable with crypto) and groups. You can even log-in with Google/Facebook.

This one needs a desktop client or app to download, but is promising and well-supported. However, it’s supported on all operating systems. It’s very community-orientated, decentralised and versatile, in that it also functions as a marketplace for all digital content. It’s actually more of a protocol on its own LBRY blockchain. It may need to get more accessible if it’s to become less marginal, but it has a dedicated following.

Finally, Tv-Two.com is a little different. Here, you watch selected adverts – and complete tasks – via an app, which is available on major mobile platforms. The app links with your smartTV. For time spent watching you get paid in the TTV – an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency. It’s early days it seems for this project, but it will be interesting to keep both ‘eyes on’ 😉

Also, be sure to check out the growing popularity of the Brave browser (and BAT token) because this also intends to implement ads that you can watch in exchange for BAT, as well as automatically rewarding content creators of your choice when you visit their websites (including this one, of course!)

This may be obvious, but you don’t need to abandon Youtube altogether. You could simply post / re-post your Youtube videos onto the Steem Blockchain via Steempeak.com. If you have a lot of Steem Power then this will still be a way to make use of your Steem investment by drawing attention to your videos on Youtube.

Also, be sure to check out the growing popularity of the Brave browser (and its widely-traded BAT token) because this also intends to implement ads that you can watch in exchange for BAT, as well as automatically rewarding content creators of your choice when you visit their websites (so you can authenticate your own Youtube channel or WordPress site etc, and get rewarded automatically by regular visitors).